We Are Not Okay: Student Inclusion and Engagement in the “Post”-Covid Times

Kathleen Offenholley, Mathematics

A bunch of us did tabling for the union these past two semesters, sitting in the hallway across from Richard Harris Terrace. It was quieter than it used to be – fewer students, fewer faculty. But the faculty and students that stopped by the table were as wonderful as always. What’s the rally about? I’ll try to make it! Yes, I’ll sign the petition.

Conversation with faculty nearly always turned after a few minutes to how rough the year had been. How unengaged the students were, how much more likely they were to miss classes and then stop showing up altogether, even the students who were doing well. “It’s not you,” I kept saying, “Everyone is experiencing this.” I lost several students I normally would have kept, and students were late, absent, behind in their work – you know, all the things we always complain about, only more so. It was an enormously difficult and dispiriting year.

Well, I’m here to say this again. It’s not you, it’s not me, and the students are not to blame either. They are no more “bad” students than we are “bad” teachers. It’s the stress we’re all breathing in every day in this “post”-Covid world, the stress of having been through several enormously difficult years. The Healthy Minds Study, based on web surveys taken by 96,000 U.S. students across 133 campuses, found that for the 2021-22 academic year, 44% of students reported symptoms of depression, 37% reported anxiety disorders and 15% reported having seriously considered suicide in the past year. These are the highest rates observed since they began the annual study in 2007 (Shine, 2023). The good news is that students are also seeking counseling in record numbers, but here at CUNY, our ratio of counselors to students is woefully below the national standard (The New Deal for CUNY, 2022).

For our students of color and immigrant students, experiences of racism, xenophobia and microaggressions in their learning environment already negatively impact their learning (see for example, Ogunyemi et al, 2020). Even the perception of being judged by race can make it more difficult to perform— a series of studies on stereotype threat, undertaken by Claude Steele and colleagues, showed that when students think they may be judged by race, they do worse on standardized tests than when that threat is not present. In mathematics, this is also true for gender—women tend to do worse than men on math problems when they think the test shows gender differences (Spencer, Steele, & Quinn, 1999). This is not to say that the threat is only a perception—it’s because students have been actually threatened by negative attitudes so often that the perception of threat emerges so easily.

Creating a Joyful, Inclusive Classroom

I firmly believe that creating a joyful and active classroom is an integral part of creating an anti-racist space. I also believe that we can each make simple changes now that will make our classrooms better learning environments, that can counteract the stress and help start to undo the damage of these past years. I also believe that in mathematics, which has so often been seen as the provenance of white men, having a classroom in which all students are actively engaged and having fun with it can be revolutionary.

I was lucky this academic year to take part in the anti-racist pedagogy group, led by Shawn Grant, Angela Polite and Kirsten Cole. They gave me the space and support to add more love and joy to my classroom, which helped make a very difficult two semesters less so. I’ll describe a little of my work with them, plus some additional ways to lessen stress in your own classroom. These ideas can work in any discipline.

The infographic and personal statement. I teach Mathematics for Elementary Education, which is a math course for students who want to be elementary school teachers. They are some of the most math-phobic students, who often readily say that they hate math. So as part my work for the anti-racist pedagogy group, I improved my syllabus to make it more welcoming. At the top of the syllabus, I created an infographic. And below that, I began my personal statement with, “I think everyone can learn and enjoy math, and everyone should have the chance to explore and have fun with math. This means not just following ‘the rules!’ This means finding patterns and ideas for yourself and creating your own math. This class will be a chance for you to grow better and better at math as the class goes on.”

These additions to the syllabus seemed to help the start of the semester go better. Usually, I have two or three weeks at the beginning in which the students are still not at all sure whether they can trust me. Many have so much past math trauma. And since they want to become elementary school teachers, if that trauma is all they know, they will pass on those negative attitudes about math to the students they teach.

Math myths. I also talked with the students about “math myths” including the idea that boys are better at math, that certain ethnic or racial groups can’t do math, and that other groups are “naturally” good at math. We had class conversations about why these ideas are wrong and harmful, and how students internalize them, which in turn affects how they do in math class. I then asked the students to write about their own experiences with harmful math myths as part of their homework. Another math myth I talked about was the idea that there is only one way to do math. Then, throughout the semester, I introduced many ways to do even simple mathematical operations. Some students shared that they learned in their country to subtract many-digit numbers by subtracting from the front (the highest place value) first, and when they moved to the U.S., they were told they were doing it wrong. Front-end subtraction, as this method is called, is an efficient and perfectly correct way to subtract. I hope by sharing these methods that when my students become teachers, they will not be so quick to tell a child they are doing the math wrong but will instead ask them to explain their ideas.

De-Stress to Create a Better Class

Class discussions. One reason the anti-racist pedagogy group was so important to me is that one of my favorite ways to lessen stress in my own life is to talk to colleagues and share ideas and struggles. Shawn Grant, Angela Polite and Kirsten Cole created a welcoming space for us all to work together and get feedback and help. This need to share and work with others is something many of our students have too. Yet, paradoxically, many faculty have told me that these past few semesters it has been much more difficult to get students to participate in classroom discussions and group work. I have a few easy tools you can use to get even very shy students to speak.

One technique I really like that helps to get students to talk is called “think-pair-share.”  You can pose a problem, or a question, give students time to think about it, and then ask them to share their idea with a neighbor – the person next to them, or behind them. (I usually point out who they are paired with, so they are not responsible for finding a partner themselves.) After they have talked for a bit, I either have a few pairs share their ideas with the whole class, or I walk around the classroom asking pairs what they came up with. It can also be a way to segue into working in groups.

On Zoom, I like doing 3-2-1-go as a way to get students to talk. I ask a question and tell everyone to type their answer into the chat – “but don’t hit enter.” Then when everyone is done typing, we all hit enter at the same time, and I talk about commonalities I see, and interesting new ideas. You can use 3-2-1-go as an icebreaker. For example, “What’s your favorite strange food combo?” is a fun icebreaker (that I borrowed from one of the wonderful presentations at BMCC). You can also use it for subject matter questions, such as, “What do you think the first step should be in solving this and why?” The second question is also fun to do in a completely different way, via private message. This takes more time while I wait and coax students to try answering, even if they are wrong (no one will know!), and then I ask several people who have good reasons why to copy and paste their answers into a public message. I can see this working in many different subjects— for example, you can ask students to make a connection between two themes or ideas, have them privately message you their ideas, and then pick three or four interesting and different takes to post publicly and discuss as a group.

The Zoom chat is also a great way to see who is not actually in class. I made it a requirement in my Zoom class that students post a certain number of times in the chat, either publicly or privately, so I knew they were there (for people who were absent, they could make this up by visiting me in office hours). But it’s not enough to require conversation—motivating that conversation is essential.

Breathing exercises or doing something physical. I have never been able to pull this one off in a classroom, even though it is one of my personal favorite ways to de-stress. My students shake their heads and won’t do it. But I know faculty who are good at gently, seriously insisting and get their whole class to do a breathing exercise, or a guided meditation, or even a bit of tai chi. There is a large body of evidence that mindfulness techniques work to reduce stress in general, and specifically for college students (see for example, Ramler et al, 2016).

Read a book, watch a video or movie, share a meme. I love showing short funny videos in class. One of my math colleagues loves telling stories in his math class. I had previously never done anything with books, but this year I bought an amazing children’s book, Kierra’s Extraordinary Experiment at a BMCC art event, where I met the artist who does the illustrations. It’s a book about how Kierra, a young African American girl, comes up with a creative science experiment that she pulls off with the help of her friends, and then later she becomes a famous scientist (Small, 2023). I didn’t read it to my students, instead I did a random raffle and gave it to the winner, to the delight of everyone. I also enjoy bringing in pi poems[1] from various countries and getting my students to volunteer to read one in their own language. One of my colleagues from the social science department uses memes to lighten up her classes. You could also try a page from a graphic novel about your subject (there are so many good ones). It would be great to share ideas for this on the OpenLab website or CETLS. To share in OpenLab. simply post a response to this article!

Play a game. It’s amazing the power a simple game has to change the dynamics of the classroom. You can play an intrinsic educational game, in which the things you want your students to learn are tied up with the mechanics of the game. One of my favorite intrinsic games for math is called “Guess my Rule.” I place a number from a sequence on the board, and students try to guess the next number. They are instructed not to say the rule, but only to say what their guess for the next number is. And if someone clearly has figured out the rule, I ask them not to say their guesses anymore, to give classmates a chance to try it out. I praise all the answers, because often there are many legitimately good guesses. This game works well on Zoom too, where I ask students to private message me their guess, and then when someone gets the correct next number, I share it publicly on the whiteboard.

You can also play a game that has more extrinsic rewards, that’s less learning, more like a quiz. PowerPoint Jeopardy is a great way to do this. There are many free templates online—you can get one pre-populated with questions in your subject area, or you can get one where you put in your own questions.

I know we believe that our chosen disciplines are already fun and engaging. But I would argue that the presence of stress and fear can make it hard for our students to see that. A game can change the mood in class in just a few minutes and help your students to be more ready and open to the material.

If you want to find some fun and easy games for your own classroom, the CUNY Games Network website has a section on games across all different disciplines. I also highly recommend The Educator’s Guide to Designing Games and Creative Active-Learning Exercises: The Allure of Play, by Tori Mondelli and our BMCC English department colleague Joe Bisz.

In conclusion, I hope this article has helped you think more broadly about what you can do in your own classroom to change the atmosphere and help your students feel welcomed, included and ready to learn. I would love to hear your ideas and continue this conversation. Post a response to this article with what you already do in your classroom, or your ideas for the new semester!

References

[1] Pi poems are poems in which the number of letters in each word of the poem are the digits of pi. For example, “Sir [3], I [1] tell [4] a [1] rhyme [5] excelling [9]…” or “Fue y cayó./Y queda solamente la inútil cifra….” Or “Que j’aime à faire apprendre un nombre utile aux sages!” See https://collegemathforelementaryeducation.wordpress.com/sec-2-7/ for more, including Chinese.

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